Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-25-Speech-3-037"
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"en.20050525.11.3-037"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen of the European Parliament, the motion of censure at the heart of this debate is clearly unwarranted and entirely without foundation. Let me explain why.
If I am here, it is because I do not regard this motion as a personal attack on myself. I have nothing against the author, and I do not believe he bears me a personal grudge either. He merely finds it very strange that someone should receive an invitation to spend some days on a yacht. I must admit that I know of no one who would be brave enough to invite him aboard a yacht for a single day. I well understand his difficulty.
So it is not a personal issue, but it is a serious institutional issue, because this type of attack reflects a populist undercurrent which resorts to manipulation by oversimplifying important and complex matters, an undercurrent opposed to the Europe we are engaged in building.
This particular motion actually invokes essential values and concepts of democracy, such as ethical conduct and transparency, but it does so with a view to mystification on the basis of pure supposition. It is an attempt to disguise the true aim of the motion, which is to undermine the credibility of the EU institutions and the entire integration project by substituting the fabrication of alleged scandals for ideological debate. This is where the line separating democracy from demagogy is crossed, and we cannot accept this abuse of the democratic process.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the people of our Union have no taste for political posturing. Europeans utterly reject gutter politics. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of this House thinks likewise and wishes to make that abundantly clear.
The political challenges confronting us at the present time require both deep thought and wholehearted efforts on our part. It is entirely legitimate to be more or less enthusiastic about the European Union. It is entirely legitimate to be more or less critical about the direction taken by the Commission or by the European Parliament. It is entirely legitimate to have different political visions. What is not legitimate is to play off one European institution against another. Nor is it legitimate to pervert parliamentary procedures in the way that this motion of censure does, to use sophistry and insinuation and impugn people’s motives without any evidence. These are not constructive contributions to the debate; on the contrary, they deprive the people of Europe of their rightful claim to our concentration on their expectations, their concerns and their problems.
The extremist approach adopted by the author of this motion is designed to obscure the issues rather than clarify them. Let me reiterate to all of you, President and Members of the European Parliament, that my entire college and I are committed to the highest standards of transparency and ethical conduct. Let me re
emphasise our openness to dialogue with this Assembly. Let me also express once again our gratitude for the support and solidarity shown by the vast majority of you, and in saying that I am thinking particularly of those who do not always agree with me ideologically but who have nevertheless made a point of distancing themselves from this type of political manoeuvre against the Commission.
Its authors tabled it on the grounds that it was the only way to compel me to come and explain myself to the House on the matter in question. In fact, you know perfectly well that I am always available to the European Parliament. I regard my availability as a sign of respect for your institution and of interest in its work and as part of a commitment to openness and transparency. The fact is that the vast majority of this House, whose views were expressed through the Conference of Presidents, considered that the present matter did not merit a plenary debate. It took the view that any questions there might be had been adequately and fully answered in my letter of 22 April 2005 to President Borrell. In other words, all the explanations I was asked to give were provided in good time.
It is in this spirit that I ask you – and I believe this will be the only merit of the present debate – to censure this motion of censure by rejecting it overwhelmingly. That is the signal of hope we could send out from here to the whole of Europe, because that would be the best way to serve the cause of democracy, which is at the heart of our European Union.
As far as the substance of the matter is concerned, I have nothing to add to the content of that letter. Last August, together with my family, I spent a week with a former lecturer and friend of mine at the invitation of another mutual friend on the latter’s private yacht in Greece. My friendship with them goes back more than twenty years to the time when I was at the University of Geneva. In other words, this is a long
standing personal and academic association that predates my entry into politics, and its character has not changed since then. Our relations have never involved any sort of business dealings or interests, and I have no knowledge of any link between these friends and the Commission which could justifiably arouse suspicion of a conflict of interests.
The author of this motion of censure maintains that a few days on holiday among friends raises questions regarding a decision taken by the Commission authorising a payment of state aid in Greece and, in more general terms, regarding the Commission’s code of ethics. This is a malicious allegation. There is no link whatsoever between this aspect of my private life and the activities of the Commission.
With regard to the decision authorising the state aid in Greece, let me remind the House that it was taken by the previous college of Commissioners under Mr Prodi on the basis of a proposal made by Mr Monti at a time when I did not hold any position of responsibility in the Commission, which truly shows how unjust, unwarranted, unfounded and absurd is this motion of censure against the present Commission.
This time lag which the author neglected to mention in the text of the motion
which explains why some Members signed the motion without proper knowledge of the facts
is clear evidence of deliberate sophistry on the part of the author. Besides, I must remind you that the incumbent college of Commissioners, at my behest and under my authority, has applied the most stringent set of rules on transparency and conflicts of interest ever to be adopted by any institution of the European Union.
In short, the motion of censure is based on a gratuitous insinuation. The fact that the members of the Commission can have personal friendships – and, moreover, that the nature of these friendships is exactly the same before and after a Commissioner’s assumption of office and bears no relation to his or her appointment – does not equate to a conflict of interests and cannot be described as such. The fact that friends and acquaintances of a Commissioner might be affected by Commission policy does not and cannot of itself warrant suspicion of a conflict of interests. This applies equally to the Commission, to Members of the European Parliament and to members of governments. There is not a single political decision
maker who has no friends or acquaintances; if the thinking of the authors of this motion were taken to its logical conclusion, the very existence of these links would paralyse every democratic political process. This, as I have said already and shall say again, would be absurd.
On the other hand, if the censure motion is absurd, why are we debating it today? Why have I come here, given that my predecessor, for example, sent a representative to the debate on the last motion of censure rather than attending in person? I have come because I believe it is important to know exactly what this Parliament feels about this type of political manoeuvre."@en1
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